They make you believe things that are not true. They tell you so many times, you accept what they are telling you is the truth rather than lies. You suffer for it like it’s the truth. The most effective torture is not physical—it is mental of course. The mind can imagine terrors far more horrific than you could ever physically bear, just like the mind will tune out those physical hurts when the pain surpasses what your body can endure.
The nerves in my back screamed like acid had been poured onto the destroyed flesh. The pain took my breath away it was so acute. I wondered how long till I passed out, and if I did, would I wake again in this life. I doubted I could walk more than a few yards. I could barely see from the blood in my eyes and blows to the head. I would die here in this hellhole and probably soon. I hoped it was soon. My dad and Hannah couldn’t see me like this, though. I hoped they never found out how I met my end. I prayed there wouldn’t be a video of my execution. Please, Christ, no video of that—
Luck of the draw. I’d had no luck when they ambushed our team. No luck when my weapon jammed. No luck when I didn’t die trying to evade capture. These fuckers learned their techniques from the Russians. They loved to get Western prisoners. And British SF? I was a fucking crown jewel. And totally expendable to my country. Luck of the draw. A sacrifice for the greater good, for democracy, for free will.
Fuck free will. I had none.
My tormentor this day loved to talk. He never stopped talking about her. I really wish he would shut his filthy hole. They don’t know where she is . . . they don’t know how to find her . . . they don’t even know her name. I kept telling myself these truths because it is all I have at my disposal to work with.
The backhand to my face roused me. And then another woke me fully.
“We will make you watch when we take her. She will scream like the whore she is. An American whore who does naked photographs.” He spit in my face and jerked my head back by the hair. “So disgusting, your women . . . they deserve everything that happens to them. To be used like a dirty whore.” He laughed at me.
I stared at him and memorized his face. I would never forget it, and if the opportunity arose I would cut out his tongue first before I killed him. Even if the killing was simply imagined in my mind. He did not like my reaction. Inside I was frozen with fear. How could I stop her from being taken? I wanted to beg, but I didn’t. I just stared and felt my heart thump inside my chest, verifying my status as alive. For now.
“Every guard will have a turn between her thighs. Then when their lust slackens she may watch when we take your head. You know this will be the way you meet your end, don’t you?” He held my neck back and dragged his finger across my throat. “You will be begging for mercy like the pig you are . . . about to be slaughtered. You won’t be proud then.” He laughed in my face, his yellow teeth flashing under his beard. “And then we will kill your American whore in the same way—”
I bolted up in my bed gasping, my hand on my cock and dripping in sweat. I leaned against the headboard and took stock of where I was . . . and thankfully where I wasn’t. You aren’t there anymore. It was just a dream. That was a long time ago.
My nightmare was the sort that takes all the bad shit that ever happened to you and stirs it together into a dreadful brew you must bathe in. I closed my eyes in relief. Brynne was not a part of the horror from Afghanistan. She was of the here and now. Brynne lived in London, working and taking her graduate degree. It was just your subconscious mixing together everything that’s bad. Brynne is safe in town.
She just wasn’t with me anymore.
I looked down at my cock, hot and hard, and wrapped my fist around the shaft. I closed my eyes and started stroking. If I kept them closed I could remember that day in my office. I needed the release right now. I needed to come so I could stop the bloody shakes invading from that fucked-up nightmare. Whatever worked. It’d be a temporary fix but would have to do.
I remembered. The first time she came to see me. She had on red boots and a black skirt. I told her to sit on my lap and made her come with my hand up her quim. So fucking sexy showing up in my office. She looked beautiful falling apart in my arms from what I did to her, from what I made her feel.
Brynne had tried to pull away from me and I didn’t want her to. I remember she had to tug herself off my lap. But when she slid to her knees and touched me through my trousers, I understood. She told me she wanted to suck me. I knew I loved her in that moment. I knew because she is honest and generous with no artifice. She is real and perfect and mine.
Not now she isn’t. She left you.
I kept my eyes closed and remembered the vision of her beautiful lips closing over the bell end of my cock and taking me in. How wet and warm and exquisite her mouth felt that first time. How beautiful the moment when she swallowed and looked up at me in that sexy, mysterious way she has. I never know what she is thinking. She is a woman after all.
I remembered everything—the sounds she made, her long hair all about her face, the slick slide against her warm lips, the grip on the shaft as she twisted and pulled me deep into her beautiful mouth.
I remembered that special time with Brynne back then, as I jerked myself to an empty climax in my very pathetic and lonely present. I had to remember or I wouldn’t have got off. I cried out as the spunk shot out the top of my cock in a near painful rush, all over the sheets on my bed, shiny white against the black. It should be her! I panted against the headboard and let the release spread throughout my body, angered that I’d just wanked off to her image like some desperate freak.
I couldn’t care less about the mess. Sheets can be washed. My mind cannot.
I can remember every time I was in her.
The emptiness invading me is something almost cruel, and the climax definitely no substitute for the real thing. Very hollow and utterly useless.
No possible way, Benny! He’s far too beautiful to have to resort to his hand for an orgasm.
Yeah, right. I got up and stripped the sheets from the bed and headed for my shower. Nothing but her will ever be enough.
• • •
She rang me that afternoon on my mobile. I missed her call because of an idiot meeting. I wanted to hurt the morons who’d taken my time, but I hit voice mail instead.
“Ethan, I—I got your letter.” Her voice sounded thready and the urge to go to her was so great I didn’t know how I would manage to keep away. “Thanks for sending it. The flowers are beautiful too. I—I just wanted you to know that I talked to my dad and he told me some stuff—”
She lost her composure then. I could hear the sounds of muffled crying. I knew she was, and it broke my heart wide open. “I have to go…maybe later we could talk.” She whispered the last. “Bye, Ethan.” And then she hung up.
I thought I would crack the glass in my mobile punching buttons to redial, praying she picked up and would speak to me. Time slowed down interminably while the call connected. Once, twice, three rings. My heart pounded and the need for air increased—
“Hi.” Just one little word. But it was her voice and she was directing it to me. I could hear noises in the background. Like traffic.
“Brynne . . . how are you? You sounded upset on your message. I was in a meeting . . .” I trailed off realizing I’d started rambling. I forced my mouth closed and desperately wished for a lovely black clove cigarette.
She breathed heavy into the receiver. “Ethan, you said to call if anything weird happened—”
“What happened? Are you all right? Where are you right now?” I felt my blood run cold at her words and the sound of her voice. “Are you outside?”
“I’m on a run at the moment. I had to get out of my head for a bit and just take a break.”
“I’m coming to you. Tell me where you are.”
She got quiet. I could hear the cars moving around her and I hated being forced to endure the imagined visualization of where she was at the moment. Alone on the street. Vulnerable. Unprotected.
“Will you tell me, please? I have to see you—we need to talk. And I want to hear what worried you enough to ring me and leave that message earlier.” More silence. “Baby, I can’t help if you won’t let me in.”
“Did you see it?” Her voice changed, becoming harsh.
“See what?” I swear I only wanted to go to her and get her in my arms. Her question didn’t register at first. The cold silence on the other end helped me figure it out real quick, though.
“Did you watch it, Ethan? Answer my question.”
“The sex tape of you and Oakley?”
She made a sound of anguish.
“Fuck no! Brynne . . .” The fact she even asked me such a thing pissed me off. “Why would I do that—”
“It’s hardly a sex tape!” she yelled into my ear. My chest ached like a knife had been shoved in.
“Well, that’s what your dad told me it was!” I yelled back at her, confused by her questioning and utterly at a loss in this fucked-up conversation we were having. If I could talk to her in person, get close to her, make her look me in the eye and listen, I might have a chance. But this fractured argument was getting us nowhere fast. I tried again in a more reasonable tone. “Brynne, please let me come to where you are.”
She was crying again. I could hear the soft sound of her against the fainter sounds of traffic. I did not like that she was out running alone either. Cars on the street speeding by her, men looking at her, indigents bothering her for handouts…
“What the hell did he tell you, Ethan? What did my dad say about me?”
“I don’t want to do this on the telephone—”
“Tell. Me.” And then silence.
I closed my eyes in dread, knowing she wouldn’t accept anything but the brutal truth, hating like hell to say it to her, but knowing I had to. How to start? I didn’t know any other way than by just jumping in feet first. I sent up a silent prayer to my mum for strength.
“He told me you and Oakley dated in school. When you were seventeen Oakley made a sex video without your knowledge and spread it around. You dropped out of school and had trouble after that. The senator shipped his son off to Iraq and you came here to study and start afresh. Now the senator is trying to win an election as vice president and wants to make sure nobody ever sees the video . . . or hears about it. Your dad told me one of Oakley’s mates has died under an unusual circumstance and he’s worried people connected to that video may be targeted…including you. It concerned him enough that he contacted me and asked a favor—that I look after you and watch for anyone who might approach you.”
What I wouldn’t give for a cigarette right now. The silence on the other end was painful to bear, but after a few interminable beats I heard the welcome sound of her saying words I wanted to hear. Words I could work with. Something I understood and could do something about. “That scares me.”
Relief washed over me hearing that. Not that she was scared but that she sounded like she needed me. Like she would let me back in. “I won’t let anyone or anything hurt you, baby.”
“I got a weird message on my cell phone two days ago. A man. From some newspaper. I didn’t know what to do—and then when I got your letter today I—I read what you said about calling you if anyone did something to bother me.”
The feeling of relief vanished instantly. “Enough of this shit, Brynne! Where are you right now? I’m coming to get you!” I would have crawled through the fucking mobile if the laws of physics allowed it. I needed to get to her and that was all, period. To hell with the bloody yammering, I had to have Brynne next to me in the flesh where I could put my hands on her.
“I’m at the south end of the Waterloo Bridge.”
Of course you are. I rolled my eyes. Just hearing the word Waterloo annoyed me. “I’m leaving now. Can you get over to Victoria Embankment and wait for me there? I can find you quickly that way.”
“Okay. I’ll go to the sphinx.” She sounded better to me. Less afraid, and the feeling did wonders for my stress level. I was going to get my girl. She might not know that yet, but it was in fact the reality of what was about to happen.
“That’ll do. If someone approaches you, just keep to the open spaces where there are people about.” I kept her on the line as she made her way to Cleopatra’s Needle on foot while I drove like a fiend and avoided London’s Finest.
“I’m here,” she said.
“Are there others around you?”
“Yes. There’s a walking tour and some couples and people with their dogs.”
“Good. I’m parking now. I’ll find you.” We ended the call.
My heart pounded in my chest as I found a place to park and started walking down to the embankment. How would this go? Would she resist me? I didn’t want to pick at our wounds, but fuck if I’d let this bloody mess go on for another day. It ended now. Today. Whatever it took to fix this cock-up got figured out right here, right now.
The sun was just starting to set when I spotted her. Her track shorts hugged her body like a second skin. She had her back to me as she leaned over the rail to look out at the river, the wind blowing her ponytail to the side, one long leg bent toward the railing with her hands resting gracefully on the top.
I slowed down because I simply wanted to soak in her image. I was finally looking at her after a week of starvation. Right in front of me. Brynne.
I needed my hands on her. They itched to hold her close and touch. But she looked different—slimmer. The nearer I got, the more visible it became. Christ, had she stopped eating in the past week? She must have dropped nearly half a stone. I stopped and stared, anger mixing with concern, but more so understanding that this shit with her past was way bigger than I’d realized up to this point. Lucky us, we can be fucked up together.
She turned around and found me. Our eyes connected and some powerful communication flowed through the breeze between us. Brynne knew how I felt. She should know. I’d told her plenty of times. She had never told me what I’d said to her, though. I was still waiting to hear those three words come from her. I love you.
She said my name. I read her lips. I couldn’t hear the sound through the wind, but I saw that she did indeed speak my name. She looked about as relieved as I felt seeing her in one piece and just a few steps away. And utterly beautiful to me, as she always was and always had been.
But this was where I stopped. If Brynne wanted me, she needed to walk over here and show me how she felt. It would kill me if she didn’t, but my dad’s advice was spot-on true. Everyone had to follow their heart. I followed mine. Now Brynne needed to do the same.
She stepped off the railing and parts inside me thudded when she paused. Almost like she waited for me to make a gesture or come and get her. No, baby. I didn’t smile, and neither did she, but we certainly made contact.
She had on a turquoise sports top that hugged her breasts and made me think about her naked and underneath me, my hands and mouth taking her all in. I wanted her so badly I ached. I guess that’s what falling in love will do to a person—make you ache in a way for which there is only one cure. Brynne was my cure. Images of her and me making love flashed through my head as I waited for her; the scenes of my desires haunting relentlessly with a craving that burned me from the inside out. I burned for Brynne. Mr. Keats sure knew what he was talking about in his poems.
I held out my hand and locked my eyes onto hers, but my feet stayed planted. And then I saw the change. A flicker in her lovely eyes. She understood what I was asking of her. She got it. And again, I was reminded of how good we were together at the most fundamental level. Brynne got me, and that alone made my hunger for her even stronger.
She kept coming until her arm lifted. Closer still until our fingers touched, her smaller, finely formed hand resting in my much bigger one. My fingers wrapped over her wrist and palm in a firm grip and pulled her in the rest of the way. Right up against my chest, body to body. I wrapped my arms around her and buried my head in her hair. The scent I knew and craved was up my nose and in my head again. I had her. I had Brynne again.
I pulled back and took her face in my hands. I held her in that position so I could really look at her. She never wavered with her eyes. My girl was brave. Life sucked at times, but she hung in and didn’t shrink away. I looked at her lips and knew I was going to kiss her whether she wanted it or not. I hoped she wanted it.
Her lovely lips were just as soft and sweet as before. More so because I’d been without them for too long. It felt like heaven having my mouth on hers. I sort of got lost in the moment and forgot we were in public. Lost in my Brynne the instant she responded to me.
She kissed me back, and it felt so good to feel her tongue tangling with mine that I groaned against her mouth. I knew what I wanted to do. And my requirements were few. Privacy. Brynne naked. If only things were that simple. I remembered we were standing amid a crowd of humanity on the Victoria Embankment and unfortunately not anywhere near private.
I stopped kissing and brushed over her bottom lip with my thumb. “You’ll come with me. Right now.”
She nodded into my hands and I kissed her once more. A thank-you kiss.
We didn’t talk as we walked to the Rover. We held hands, though. I wasn’t letting go until I had to in order to put her in the car. Once she was in the passenger seat and the doors locked I turned and really looked at her. She looked half starved, and it made me angry. I remembered the first night we met and how I got her the Power Bar and the water.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“First? To get you some food.” It came out a little harsher than I wanted it to.
She nodded at me and then looked away, out the window.
“After you eat we’ll get a new phone and mobile number for you. I need to have your old one so I can track whoever tries to contact you. All right?”
She looked down at her lap and nodded again. I almost pulled her into my arms and told her everything would be fine, but I held off.
“Then I’m taking you home. My place—home.”
“Ethan, that’s not a good idea,” she whispered, still looking down at her lap.
“Fuck good ideas,” I exploded. “Would you at least look at me?” She turned her eyes up to mine and smoldered in the seat, a hint of red fire flickering, making them look very brown. I wanted to drag her to me and shake her, force her to understand that this bullshit breakup was a thing of the past. She was coming home with me, period. I turned the key in the ignition.
“What do you want from me, Ethan?”
“That’s easy.” I made a rude noise. “I want to go back to ten days ago. I want to be back in my office, fucking on my desk with you wrapped around me! I want your body underneath mine looking up at me with some expression other than the one I saw when you left me at the lifts!” I rested my forehead on the steering wheel and took in air.
“Okay . . . Ethan.” Her voice sounded shaky and more than a little defeated.
“Okay, Ethan?” I mocked. “What does that mean? Okay I’m coming home with you? Okay to you and me? Okay, I’ll let you secure me? What? I need more from you, Brynne.” I talked to the windshield because I was scared to see her face right now. What if I couldn’t make her understand—
She leaned toward me and put her hand on my leg. “Ethan, I—I need—I need the truth from you. I have to know what is happening around me—”
I immediately covered her hand with mine. “I know, baby. I was wrong for keeping the information from you—”
She shook her head at me. “No, you don’t know. Let me finish what I was saying.” She put her fingers to my lips to shut me up. “You always interrupt me.”
“Shutting up now.” I grabbed at her fingers with my other hand and held them to my lips. I kissed her fingers and didn’t let go. Hell, I’d take any small opportunities I could get.
“Your honesty and bluntness is one of the things I love about you, Ethan. You always told me what you wanted, what you intended to do, how you felt. You were true with me and it made me feel safe.” She tilted her head and shook it. “You have no idea how much I needed that from you. I didn’t fear the unknown because you were so good at telling me exactly what you wanted to happen with us. That really worked for me. But I trusted you implicitly and you damaged that part between us by not being honest, and by not telling me you were hired to protect me. The fact I need protection at all is a mind fuck for me, but don’t you think I’m entitled to fucking know about it?”
God, she was sexy when she was all fired up and said bad words. I gave her a moment of triumph because she was completely in the right.
When she tugged her fingers away from my lips, giving me permission to speak, I mouthed my words more than said them. “I am so sorry.” And I was deeply sorry. I had done wrong. Brynne needed the bare naked truth. She had her reasons; it was a requirement for her and I’d blown it. Wait. Did she just say “one of the things I love about you”?
“But . . . since I’ve talked to my dad, and he’s told me things I didn’t know before, I realize it’s not totally your fault. Daddy put you in a position you didn’t ask for . . . and I’ve been trying to see it from your perspective. Your letter helped me understand.”
“So you forgive me and we can put this bloody mess behind us?” I was hopeful but not completely sure. Just tell me straight up so I can guess where to go from this point. I could work with odds like that.
“Ethan, there’s so much you don’t know about me. You don’t really know what happened to me, do you?”
Brynne gave me a look that belied her years from the amount of anguish in it. I wanted to make the anguish go away if I could. I wished I could tell her it didn’t matter for me to know. If it was horrible and it hurt her to tell me, then she didn’t have to. But I knew this wasn’t the way for Brynne. She needed to lay all her cards on the table in order to move forward.
“I guess I don’t. I didn’t realize your past had marked you so deeply until recently. I thought I was protecting you from possible political surveillance and exposure for harm or gain depending on who was targeting you. Once I saw that you had demons, I cared too much by that point to scare you or have you hurt by it. I only wanted to protect you and keep us together.” I spoke to her face, so close to mine, soaking her molecules in with every breath.
“I know, Ethan. I get that now.” She moved back fully into her seat. “But you still don’t know everything.” She looked away out the window again. “You won’t like hearing about it. You may not . . . want . . . to be together after you know.”
“Don’t say that to me. I know precisely what I want.” I reached for her chin and tugged her my way. “Let’s get some food in you and you can tell me whatever you need to say. Yeah?”
She nodded just slightly in that acquiescent way she’d mastered—the look she was giving me made me utterly insane for her to the point my possessiveness surprised even me.
I knew she was hurting and afraid, but I also knew she was tough and that she would fight her way through whatever haunted her. It wouldn’t change how I felt, though. In my eyes, she was my beautiful American girl and she always would be.
“I’m not going anywhere, Brynne. You’re stuck with me and you better get used to it,” I said. I kissed her on the lips and let go of her chin.
She smiled a half smile as I put the car in reverse. “I missed you so much, Ethan.”
“You have no idea.” I reached out and touched her face again. I couldn’t help it. Touching her meant she was really here with me. Feeling her skin and body warmth told me I wasn’t dreaming it. “Food first. You are going to eat something substantial, and I’m going to watch and enjoy every second of your beautiful mouth as you do. What do you fancy right now?”
“I don’t know. Pizza? I’m not exactly dressed for dinner,” she smirked, gesturing to her clothes. “You have on a suit.”
“How you’re dressed is the least of my concerns, baby.” I took her hand to my lips and kissed the soft skin. “You are beautiful to me in anything . . . or nothing. Especially nothing,” I attempted teasing.
She blushed just slightly. I felt the throb in my cock when I saw her reaction. I wanted her home with me so badly. In my bed where I could reach for her all throughout the night and know she was there with me. I wasn’t letting her get away again.
She once told me she loves it when I kiss her hand. And I know I cannot help myself. It’s hard not to touch and kiss her all the time, because I’ve never been a person to deny myself much of anything I want. And I want her.
She mouthed a silent thank you but still looked sad. She probably dreaded our conversation but knew it had to be done. For her own sake she needed to tell me something hard and I would have to listen. If this is what she needed to do in order for us to move forward, then I would hear whatever it was.
“Pizza it is then.” I had to let go of her hand to drive, but I could manage it. Just barely. My girl was right next to me in my car. I could smell her, and see her, and even touch her if I reached out; she was that close to me. And for the first time in days, the constant ache in my chest had slipped away.
